Better Off Dead
by lizardwriter
Summary: Crackfic. Zombie apocalypse meets Glee. SPOILER for 3x14  read beyond these words at own risk : Quinn Fabray's accident has unexpected consequences. Disclaimer: I don't own Glee.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is a completely crackfic idea that came to me for reasons I won't elaborate on. I dunno if I'll continue it, but I had too much fun writing it once I started to not at least try to put out a chapter or a prologue or something like that. This is not a happy, everyone lives happily ever after, love is found and conquers all type of fic. Hopefully it's at least somewhat funny. **

**Anyway, enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or the characters…Something I'm rather pleased about, really, though the money would be nice.**

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It started with a crash. One stupid car accident. Don't text and drive, I'd been warned, but that doesn't really cut it when the person who crashes into you is no longer a person. When they're thrown from their car, and their limbs are bent at unatural angles, and they still manage to stand up and walk back towards you, their face all distorted.

I'd thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me from the accident. My brain took a pretty good shaking when my forehead hit the steering wheel, after all, but then he was at my broken window and I could smell him, and things started becoming a little clearer. There's no real comparison to the smell of rotting flesh, and let me tell you that it sticks with you. It gets infused in your nostrils, and even once you're no longer technically alive you can't rid yourself of the stench...Of course there are other reasons for it then.

There was a moment, when he reached his arms through the window, when I still thought he was trying to help. He grabbed onto my arm and pulled so hard I felt a painful pop somewhere, and I thought he was just trying to yank me out the window.

"The door," I muttered, blearily, but then his teeth sunk into my forearm. "What the fuck!" I had the presence of mind to scream despite the pounding in my head and what was undoubtedly a severe concussion. On top of that I was rather preoccupied by the way I couldn't really feel my legs despite that I could see that they were pinned way too tightly between the steering wheel and the seat.

I snatched my arm back and then delivered a swift, if painful elbow to the face (a technique I picked up long ago while trying to fend off some of Puckerman's less appreciated advances), then rooted around on the floor of the backseat where I kept the emergency kit. I knew I had an emergency flare in there somewhere, and if anything I figured it'd scare this creep off.

(Yes, maybe I was being a little thick, but the full impact of the situation hadn't hit me yet...I mean, who expects zombies in Lima, Ohio, right? Besides, I had serious head trauma.)

The man was reaching back through my window for me by the time I located the flare, and I got it lit by sheer dumb luck, as I felt the world growing darker.

I felt, more than saw the man recoil as I shoved the flare towards him, aware of the extreme heat radiating back at me. He snarled and shrieked as I pushed it into his chest, not fully comprehending why it seemed to give as much as it did, and then there was a high-pitched howl before my vision began to swim and darkness closed in.

.

.

When I woke up, it was to excruciating pain and the annoying beeping of machinery. I forced my eyes open despite the throbbing in my head, and was greeted by the soft glow from the lights of the machine hooked up to me. My eyes searched what I could make out of my surroundings and I deduced what I deemed to be two important things: 1) it was night (the moonlight streaming through the window was a big hint there), and 2) I was in a hospital (the smell of disinfectant and the irritating vitals monitor tipped me off).

I then began searching for the source of the pain that was radiating through my body, and my eyes fell upon my left arm. Even with the limited light in the room, I could tell that it didn't look normal. Most of my exposed skin was silvery and pale in the moonlight, but there was a massive patch on my left arm that looked black and shiny.

That stupid man who'd bit me had obviously given me some sort of rank infection. I was not pleased. "Asshole," I muttered.

I tried moving it, but the pain only increased and, perhaps it was my imagination, but, as I lifted it slightly, the blackness seemed to spread.

I dabbed at the edges of the blackness gingerly with the pad of my finger, and pulled back when I was met with a cold, clammy, slightly slick layer of….something. Something gross. Why the hell hadn't the nurses disinfected it? Why wasn't it bandaged? It didn't make sense.

As I stared at my arm, trying to figure out exactly what might be going on, I felt the pain increase. It was really getting to be unbearable. Maybe some morphine would help. I moved my head to look for the call button to fetch a nurse, but the movement turned out to be a mistake, as the pain overwhelmed me and my stomach decided to empty its contents off the side of the bed.

I cringed as I wiped my mouth clean, assuming that would be the end of it, but a moment later I was proven wrong. It seemed that now that I had started, I couldn't stop. I was just glad that I wouldn't be the one who had to clean up the mess later.

In a brief pause from the vomiting, I glanced back at my arm which had practically gone numb from the severity of the pain, and realized with horror that it wasn't my imagination at all. The blackness was spreading, weaving its way up my arm and approaching where my gown covered my shoulder.

This was not good.

I again made an attempt to reach for the call button, worried that if I had some overly-ambitious form of gangrene or something that they might have to amputate my arm, and I did NOT want to finish out my senior year as a one-armed cheerleader.

The pain was spreading, too, I realized as I failed to find the button before my stomach heaved again, and the numbness was fast on its heels. Now if only I could keep my stomach contents in check long enough to push that stupid call button and get some help, maybe I could do something about both before it was too late and I threw up my actual stomach (which seemed like more of a possibility each second).

At least it'd make for a killer diet, I tried to look on the bright side. Think of the weight I must have lost just in the last five minutes.

Then I felt it. It was just the start of it, really. It was nothing compared to what was to come, to what I feel now, but it was a hint of it. I felt hunger. It was the strangest symptom yet. I mean who had ever heard of being hungry while vomiting. The two didn't exactly go hand in hand.

My head was starting to feel strange too. And my chest was all constricted, like my lungs were trying to breathe but had forgotten how.

I felt panic setting in, and then consciousness started to slip away as the unbearable pain started pounding between my eyes.

"Oh shit," I grumbled before everything went black again.

Wasn't that just the understatement of the century?

.

.

The next time I regained consciousness, two things were clear: 1) I was ravenous, and 2) I was no longer human.

On the bright side, the pain had stopped.

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**Loved it? Hated it? Think it's worth a second chapter? Think it's completely implausible (hey, you're not the only one, but it's Glee, so you never know…this could be the plan for next season)? ;) Hit the little button and let me know. **

**Thanks for reading my wackiest idea yet. (P.S. It was unbeta'd and I took a Benadryl like two hours ago, so odds are it has mistakes. Hopefully you can all deal with them. I'm going to go to sleep now.)**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: So I'm continuing this, for now, at least. Don't expect regular updates as I progress with things like my original work, but this is a fun escape sometimes. Hope you like it!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or the characters, just their zombie selves. **

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When you wake up in a coffin, two thoughts hit you immediately:

1) Am I dead?

2) Thank God I put on clean underwear this morning.

The second may be a bit surprising, but it becomes even more relevant when you realize that somebody has redressed you before they put you in there, which means that someone has actually seen your underwear.

Waking up in a coffin also leads to the puzzling dilemma of "how can I be dead when I'm alive enough to ponder whether or not I am indeed dead". The thing is, when you look down at your body and see the ghostly pale skin, it's a big hint that you're maybe not quite as alive as you once were. Then there's the whole climbing out of the coffin, looking at the date on the condolences registry nearby, and realizing that it's actually been a week since you put on that clean underwear. Besides that, I had the added issue of feeling decidedly…off. Inhuman, is a good word for it.

Needless to say, I wasn't pleased. Especially when I caught sight of my reflection.

Zombieism isn't exactly flattering for a girl's complexion.

Things started coming back to me slowly. The accident, the bite, the hospital…the stupid wedding that had me where I was, when I was that led to all of this. Oh, God, I hoped that they hadn't gone through with the wedding. If being dead teaches you anything, it's that life's too short to waste it on boys like Finn Hudson.

Sure, there was a time in my life when I thought I couldn't do anything more than be with Finn and be the head of the Cheerios, but now I know better. I'm worth more than Finn Hudson, even as a zombie.

As for the Cheerios…I was pretty sure that Sue Sylvester's standards for who can be on the team included an 'alive' clause. Then again, Yale probably does too. So right away, that was all of my future plans, both immediate and a little more distant right out the window.

Being dead, I decided in that moment, sucked.

.

.

The thing is that, yeah, okay, being dead does suck on certain levels, but there are others, where it's really not so bad. Well, that's probably not true. Being _dead_ dead sucks. Being undead, though…It has its perks. For starters, I don't have to follow society's rules anymore, which is good because as Zombieism spreads, society's crumbling anyway. I no longer have any concern for superficial things like popularity. I don't care about sexuality or what way anyone swings or even what way I swing. "Life" as a zombie is a lot more free-form.

Don't get me wrong: it totally has its downsides, too. I mean I preferred my diet when I was alive, for instance. (Although you adjust to eating things like road kill remarkably quickly. It's not even that difficult to get over the fact that you're eating a person, depending on just how annoying they were in life. Besides, the plus side is that I never put on a pound, no matter how much I eat these days.) There's also the hunger. Imagine your worst day, your most extreme hunger. Now times that by ten. You're halfway to what it feels like to be a zombie. The hunger is all consuming, if you let it be.

I don't, of course, but it takes strong will and, well, I'll be honest: stubbornness.

Still, it took time to learn to ignore the hunger. When I woke up in the coffin, I was hungrier than the time I tried that cleanse where all I had to eat or drink for ten days was lemonade, maple syrup and cayenne, and at the time it was impossible to ignore.

After my initial realizations and memories flooded back, one thing became abundantly clear. I needed to eat. Like, that second.

Funeral homes, it turns out, are not so big on the "keeping food lying around" thing, which I suppose makes sense, as death doesn't exactly give most people an appetite. Still, when you wake up a zombie, it's rather inconvenient. I finally found a mini-fridge in this office which had half a turkey sandwich in it, and I ate that.

It was weird, though. The normal digestion thing didn't seem to be happening. I could practically feel the sandwich just sitting there in my stomach and it was almost uncomfortable. Not to mention that my hunger wasn't even remotely sated.

I caught a whiff of something through the partially open window and my stomach growled. I couldn't quite identify it, but it smelled tasty, so the next thing I knew, I was climbing out the window, following my nose.

You can imagine my dismay, I'm sure, when I discovered that my nose had led me to a recently dead raccoon lying by the side of the road. It wasn't exactly something that I'd have associated with the word "tasty" before, let alone the ones "smells good". I looked around in the hopes that maybe it was just a nearby burger joint that I was smelling, but all I saw was a dry cleaners and a RadioShack.

My stomach grumbled louder, and I couldn't believe that looking at this dead raccoon wasn't making me nauseous. I stared at it a while longer, trying to rationalize things, trying to come to terms with them, but I just couldn't. My stomach was in physical pain from the hunger I felt, and thinking isn't exactly easy when you're that hungry.

I'm not exactly proud of what happened next, and I'll spare you the gory details, but when I was done, I felt a little better…A little more human.

Of course, 'a little human' is about as good as I ever feel these days. Then again, as I said before, that's not all bad.

.

.

Once my hunger was somewhat sated (which was after a few more instances of following my nose to pit stops that I wasn't exactly proud of), I had to decide what to do next. Really, two options sprang immediately to mind:

1) Go find someone who could tell me what the fuck was going on with me (though I had my suspicions)

or

2) Go find people I knew when I was definitely alive and see what they knew (and make sure that Rachel hadn't actually married Finn).

Given that I wasn't sure who might be able to tell me what was going on with me, as I wasn't exactly friends with any scientists while I was captaining the Cheerios, I opted for option #2.

It took me a little while to get my bearings, and travel was slow going given that I was on foot, not feeling myself, and didn't trust myself to drive even if I'd had access to a car at that point. Still, I eventually found my way to familiar surroundings, and that happened to be outside of Santana's house.

It was a place I'd gone many times growing up when I needed someone to talk to, and I could always rely on Santana to give me some no-bullshit advice. I suppose that it was as good a place as any to start, really.

I approached the house cautiously. I figured your friend you thought was dead showing up at your house might scare people a little, so I avoided the front door and headed around the side, instead. I rapped lightly on Santana's window, and stepped to the side.

After a minute I heard the rustle of curtains, and then the window was pushed open a little and Santana stuck her head out.

"Brit?" I heard her call softly.

"Santana, don't freak out," I said, stepping forward out of the dark so she could see me a little in the light from the window.

She froze as she took me in, her eyes wide in fear. She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

For a moment, I thought she might scream. Mercifully, she didn't.

(Did I mention that my hearing has improved since I became a zombie? It makes peoples screams a bit painful really. People are so inconsiderate when you're just trying to have a little snack.)

"You're dead."

"That's kinda what I deduced," I replied, trying to smile.

"No, Quinn, you're dead. Like really dead. Your funeral is scheduled for tomorrow!"

I could tell she was starting to hyperventilate, and that was not really going along with my whole "not freaking out" request.

"Well…It doesn't look like I'll need one?" I suggested.

Santana closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then looked back up at me again. I looked into her dark eyes, ones that I had known virtually my whole life, ones that I had shared so many experiences with, and I silently pleaded with her to calm down and to believe what she was seeing.

"So you're not dead," she said, then she reached over and punched me in the arm. Hard.

"Ouch!" I said, more out of anticipation (and experience) than because it actually hurt. I looked down, expecting a surge of pain, but instead I just felt a little movement in my skin, as if a bruise was forming, but the pain that a punch from Santana usually elicits didn't come. I rubbed my arm for show anyway. "What was that for?"

"For scaring the ever-living crap out of me, Quinn! People don't just come back from the dead!"

"I think I might be a zombie," I offered the only conclusion that made any sense at all to me (and, yes, I'm aware that zombieism probably isn't the most logical conclusion in the world, but look at the evidence I had – besides, I was right).

Santana laughed, then stopped and studied me hard. "This is some fucked up shit," she muttered, and I had to agree.

"Right, well, you should probably…come in? Just don't, like, bite me or try to eat my brain or anything, okay? And we'll try to figure something out."

"Do you happen to have any dead animals lying around?" I asked, feeling a rumble in my stomach as soon as she said the word "eat".

Santana shot me a disgusted look. "You're joking, right?"

I grimaced. "I wish."

Santana made a gagging noise. "You're on your own for that."

"Okay, give me a minute," I said, catching the hint of what I thought might be dead rodent somewhere nearby. "Also, I don't know about climbing in through windows."

"Come around the front when you're done. My parents are out."

"Thanks."

I started to turn away, but Santana's voice stopped me.

"Quinn?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're not really dead. Or permanently dead. Or that you're undead? Whatever. It's good to see you. Even if you look like shit."

I grinned. "Thanks."

.

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**A/N: Hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to hit that button and let me know what you thought. Hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it. **

**xx**


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